Last Chance for Heathrow Consultation

Air Quality Brentford have some suggestions for your response

The Heathrow Consultation on the third runway closes at 11.45pm on Thursday 25th May. There is a strong chance the new flightpath will fly directly over Brentford so please ensure you have your say, it doesn't have be technical, personal thoughts are just as important.

There are two ways to give feedback and Air Quality Brentford  are providing some suggested responses at the end of this email so that you can do this in a few minutes if time is short:

1) Fill in the Government’s online consultation on Heathrow Expansion here.  See suggested responses below.

2) or send an email to RunwayConsultation@dft.gsi.gov.uk ensuring you include your name and address. Please feel free to base your response  upon the suggested responses.

It is a good idea to copy prospective parliamentary candidates: ruth@ruthcadbury.org.uk joe@hounslowlibdems.org.uk and mary.macleod@gmail.com

Do copy in your ward councillors as well.

The basic facts are as follows:

• New flight paths are proposed directly over Brentford with exact routes still to be defined.
• 250,000 more flights a year (47% more air traffic).
• Each flight path operating 12 hours a day (instead of 8 as at present)..
• Pollution predicted to far exceed climate change targets
• Night flights - sleep regarded as 'an excessive freedom' by Heathrow director.
• £15 billion monetary cost to tax payer, far exceeding expansion costs for Gatwick.

Here is a short leaflet outlining why the Government like the idea. The full consultation document is available to read here. You could go straight to page 30 and read about air quality and further noise pollution. You may find the 2 minute film on this webpage helpful.

With respect to climate change and pollution due to Heathrow expansion, the Commons Environmental Audit Committee has accused the government of "magical thinking" - wishing the problem away without a proper solution.

Suggested responses:  
Please feel free to take all or just the first few paras for your response but do put into your own words.

Question 1: The Government believes there is the need for additional airport capacity in the South East of England by 2030. Please tell us your views.

I am firmly against the expansion of Heathrow on the following grounds:

1.  An increase in noise disturbance with flights overhead for up to 12 hours a day, landing every 60 seconds affecting the lives of everyone: workers, children and the sick and elderly.
2. Significant increases in air pollution in an area already far exceeding legal air pollution limits.
3. With 47% more planes, the road, train, tube networks will be operating far beyond capacity and there is no clear plan to address this.
4. Safety. 250,000 more flights a year will be travelling over one of the most densely populated parts of the country.
5. The case for expansion is unconvincing.

There is no convincing plan for addressing these issues and the financial and environmental costs for developing Gatwick are significantly less.

In 2008 Theresa May said: A Heathrow third runway "would undermine our national [climate] targets and seriously damage the health of the local community.”

Question 2: Please give us your views on how best to address the issue of airport capacity in the South East of England by 2030. This could be through the Heathrow Northwest Runway scheme (the Government's preferred scheme), the Gatwick Second Runway scheme, the Heathrow Extended Northern Runway scheme, or any other scheme.

The relentless pursuit to increase air traffic is seriously flawed given the cost to the environment. One could reasonably expect the British government to be more creative and visionary than ‘more planes at any cost’. Furthermore, who can say what the business travel needs after Brexit may be?  It is possible they may be significantly diminished.

Of the various expansion options, the proposed increase in airport capacity at Heathrow has the most impact in terms of noise and air pollution on the most people.

Lastly, has the option to treat Heathrow primarily as a business airport, with Gatwick and others supporting primarily leisure travel been considered?

Question 3: The Secretary of State will use a range of assessment principles when considering any application for a Northwest Runway at Heathrow Airport. Please tell us your views.

Assessment criteria should meet and exceed the highest European and WHO standards. This government has a poor track record in central London. Government plans to tackle air pollution are inadequate and result in ongoing High court cases.  

There should be stringent requirements for Heathrow to produce evidence-based assurances against standards, amounting to guarantees. The current proposal falls short of this, often relying on loose predictions and intentions unfounded in fact.

Question 4: The Government has set out its approach to surface access for a Heathrow Northwest runway scheme. Please tell us your views.

There is no convincing scheme for transport to and from the airport.  This is already a highly congested network (tube, train and road), suffering from very high levels of pollution. Heathrow Airport is already very congested and a third runway will make this worse.

Whether a third runway is to be built or not, there should be clear, properly evidenced commitments to reduce private vehicle access in order to reduce general congestion in the area. These must be enshrined in law.

Question 5: The draft Airports National Policy Statement sets out a package of supporting measures to mitigate negative impacts of a Heathrow Northwest Runway scheme. Please tell us your views. Are there any other supporting measures that should be set out? In particular, please tell us your views on:

Question 5.1 

There are already many places in the London area that are over legal limits of air pollution. We are not convinced that the government has sound plans to address this. The construction and running of an additional runway at Heathrow will make matters worse. It is not acceptable that illegal levels of air pollution should be made even worse than it already is by the proposals for a third runway.

Question 5.2 

The noise from the current Heathrow airport is clearly unacceptable to millions of people in the London area. The plan should be to gradually improve the noise levels by having less noisy planes and fewer landings and take off. Instead the proposal is to exacerbate the current situation. There should be no landings or take offs from the existing runways between 10pm and 6am and no third runway in an attempt to make the noise levels more acceptable to those living in the impacted area.

Question 6: The Government has set out a number of planning requirements that a Heathrow Northwest Runway scheme must meet in order to operate. Please tell us your views. Are there any other requirements the Government should set out?

The Government should meet the highest environmental policy standards set by Europe and the WHO.

A third runway at Heathrow airport is completely inconsistent with the UK ratification of the Paris agreement.

Question 7: The Appraisal of Sustainability sets out the Government's assessment of the Heathrow Northwest Runway scheme, and considers alternatives. Please tell us your views.

Question 8: Do you have any additional comments on the draft Airports National Policy Statement or other supporting documents?

Question 9: The Government has a public sector equality duty to ensure protected groups have the opportunity to respond to consultations. Please tell us your views on how this consultation has achieved this.

Chris Grayling promises a full and fair consultation. In the event it was far from this.

In two consultation information events on the policy in the borough of Hounslow, information provided was one-sided, misleading and dishonest in that it presented the benefits of the third runway with virtually no reference to the disadvantages.

Examples of this were:

-          Monetary benefits presented without costs

-          Compliance with the Climate Change Act stated when the Committee on Climate Change say that the Climate Change Act is not sufficient to meet temperature targets in the Paris agreement.

-          Lack of information about new flight paths, respite periods and timetable to enable residents to make a fair assessment of the impact on them

-          Lack of information about the number of extra flights per year

-          Convoluted analysis of surface access masking the inevitable increased road congestion.

This consultation has been woefully inadequate in seeking comprehensively the feedback of residents:

·         The survey is onerous and difficult to complete.

·         The process is communicated by word of mouth across the internet rather than by any more effective means.

·         Those not using the internet are discriminated against.

May 22, 2017